SolarCity CEO Lyndon Rive Tops the 2016 List of Highest Paid Execs in the Bay Area

Stephen Lacey is the Editor-in-Chief of Greentech Media. He manages a team of writers focused on solar, storage, efficiency, mobility, and grid modernization. He is producer/host of The Energy Gang and Interchange podcasts, two leading interview and analysis shows on the business of energy and cleantech.

Editor's note: We changed the headline to more accurately reflect Rive's compensation. According to SolarCity: "Lyndon Rive’s actual salary/total cash compensation in 2015 was $275,016. Everything else included in the calculation is accounting value of equity awards that have not been exercised and are currently trading well below their exercise prices, or are based on longer term company targets that have not been met.

Have you ever wondered what you needed to do to earn over $77 million a year? Then you should probably ask Lyndon R. Rive, CEO of SolarCity Corp., who topped this year's list of the highest paid Bay Area executives under 40.

Other eight-digit salaries came from companies you might expect, like Facebook, but there were some surprises on the list. The data was complied by Equilar, an executive compensation research firm, and based on total compensation for the most recent fiscal year, in most cases 2015.

A single monkey caused a nationwide blackout in Kenya after falling on to a crucial piece of equipment. The monkey fell on a transformer at the Gitaru hydroelectric power station on Tuesday, electricity provider KenGen said in a statement.

The transformer then tripped, resulting in the loss of 180 megawatts of power and triggering a blackout across Kenya.

Fortune: Nest CEO Tony Fadell's Flight Is a Sign Alphabet's Structure Is Working

If you read Fadell’s blog post about the development, his departure sounds amicable, and less sudden than the timing of the announcement warrants -- in the works for six months. It may simply have been the time he agreed to stay as part of Google’s takeover in January 2014. He’s certainly got plenty to keep him busy, including the smart go-kart startup, Actev Motors, which he co-founded and introduced to the world at the New York toy fair early this year.

But hints that all was not going according to plan surfaced months ago, and the number of key managers taking flight has to be unsettling for Nest employees.

Each year in June two very important reports are released that provide a comprehensive view of the global energy markets. The highlight of the recently released Renewables 2016 Global Status Report was that the world’s renewable energy production has never been higher. But the biggest takeaway from this year’s BP Statistical Review, released Wednesday, may be that the world’s fossil-fuel consumption has also never been higher.

While global coal consumption did decline by 1% in 2015, the world set new consumption records for petroleum and natural gas. The net impact was a total increase in the world’s fossil-fuel consumption of about 0.6%.

Everyone makes mistakes, and many people try to cover them up. But if you try to hide an error made behind the wheel of a car made by Tesla Motors, you are liable to be caught out. In fact, trying to hide what really happened in any kind of car accident could soon become just about impossible.

That’s the lesson of an incident over the weekend in which the owner of a Tesla Model X SUV crashed into a building and claimed it had suddenly accelerated on its own. But Tesla vehicles are constantly connected to their manufacturer via the internet, and the company had this to say in a statement to the Verge:

"Data shows that the vehicle was traveling at 6 mph when the accelerator pedal was abruptly increased to 100 percent. […] Consistent with the driver’s actions, the vehicle applied torque and accelerated as instructed."